Hey friends,
today I have an important topic to talk about: Stress. Stress is something that everyone deals with. Stress is a natural response of our body. But having too much and constant stress isn’t healthy. It’s unhealthy for your mind and our body. So when we feel stressed, we should learn to be able to deal with it efficiently and reduce as much stress in our lives as possible.
So today I’m giving you guys 10 tips on how to have less stress in your day to day lives.
1. be 5min early
Arrive at 5 min early to your appointments. This way you give yourself a cushion for any mishaps or emergencies. Whether you missed the bus or spilled coffee all over your clothes and need to change them, you have that time cushion you can use and still be on time. This way you’re not stressing or rushing to be on time. And when you arrive early you can use that time to collect yourself and to make sure you’re presentable.
I do this by setting my watch to be 3min faster than the time truly is. I then go about my day sticking to the (wrong) time on my watch.
2. get enough and good sleep
We all need about 7-9 hours of sleep to function properly and to be healthy. But not only how much you sleep is important, but also how well you sleep. Now I do have an entire video and article on how to improve the quality of your sleep. Click here for more.
3. journal
Often times we feel stressed and anxious because there is so much going on in our minds. We worry about what we still need to do or what we have done. To quiet and process your thoughts, I highly recommend journaling. To our mind, the writing process is a form of coping with the thoughts and problems that we might have in our minds, and lets us quiet them and can help us relax. For a great journaling method that I talked about click here.
4. don’t pack your schedule to tight.
Make sure you have room for error. So have a 15min cushion in between meetings and events. This way you have room in case one task took longer than expected. Or use that time to prepare yourself mentally for a change of task.
5. meditation
Meditation can really help us calm and quiet our minds. There are so many different methods of meditation that you should really do your research as to which method suits you best.
I personally like to lie down on my back and focus my thought on my breath. And when I find my mind drifting to other things, I bring it back gently.
Also guided mediation is great for beginner. It helps our mind stay put and not stray. There are many great apps for guided meditations.
If a meditation session didn’t go as planned or as hoped. Don’t stress about it. we all have those days, where it’s just hard to concentrate. And that’s okay. Your intention of sitting down and trying to quiet your thoughts counts.
6. don’t procrastinate
This is obvious but still a hard one. Procrastination really pushes back our timeline and as a result we have less time to complete our task, which often leads to stress.
Procrastination is often just a habit. The trigger is mostly a daunting or difficult task, and the habit is whatever you like to do to procrastinate. So instead, we should start on the most difficult task that we dread most first. Then it is out of our way and you limit the possibility to procrastinate.
7. don’t snooze
Snoozing just makes getting up that much harder. I know and can relate that the bed is just so warm and you want to sleep just five minutes longer, but trust me, it’s just going to get harder to get up.
What works for many is to count down from 3 or 5 and after one you tell yourself: Get up now! Personally this doesn’t work too well for me. So what I do instead is to use an alarm that needs me to do something before being able to turn it off. My alarm (it’s an app) needs me to solve math equations before turning it off, and that really gets brain to wake up and be alert.
Then when you get up, drink a large glass of water to replenish the water you lost overnight and to wake yourself from the inside.
8. schedule me time
It’s important to schedule some me time so you don’t burn out and you recharge and refuel. How to plan out your perfect me time, I talk about in this blog post here.
9. try lavender
Lavender is known to let us feel relaxed. So when you are stressed, try spraying some lavender essential oil with water onto your pillow case for a good night sleep, or try diffusing some lavender in your home.
10. will you remember this in a year
Often times the stress or problem feel all consuming and unmanageable. But when we think about everything we were stressed about a year ago, we don’t remember most of it. So when you take account the bigger picture, the stress now will seem more insignificant and might help you to feel less stressed. After all the more we are stressed, the more relaxation we take from the time we have on earth.
So I hope you found this helpful and are able to cut down the stress in your life. If you know someone who is stressed a lot, maybe send this to them to help them out 😉
X
Silvia
Catchy Cravings 